By the way, if you get tired of having a big stack of woodblocks taking up
room in your studio, would it be a toxic hazard to actually use them as
firewood? Especially if you had used them with oil based inks?
Shireen

Harry,
Cheeky indeed....what does a digital guy know? He is printing by pushing a button, easy for him to say "do all 200 in one sitting...."

Actually, I usually do about 20 and print 5, then 5, then 5 and then the last 5. Sometimes I admit I only do 1. But usually I eventually do all 20. The real answer to this is to just not number them at all and tell the customer you do about 20...whats wrong with that? Dave never numbers his work and does about 200. They all look the same to me and to think that if you do 20 at once that there is any difference between #1 and #20 is just ridiculous, they get all mixed up before they are numbered anyway. Anyone who denies this has never worked editioning prints. Maybe in a big for hire studio they would deny this, but in my studio and everyone I know they get all mixed up by the time they are done. Of course for the baren exchanges I do 40, and usually toss the 9 that are over the number needed. There are usually this many iffy ones as I am fussy, fussy, fussy. We are surely our own worst critics.

I know many real good practicing printmakers that print a few at a time...good records are essential. I keep a notebook with a print in it and write it all down on the edge of the print or on the back. My notebook is 18x24, so I can get pretty big work in it without folding it, but I am happy to fold one that is 22x30...after all it is just paper and I am not making Mona Lisa's here. At least not yet, but maybe if I live long enough....maybe not.
Best to all,
Barbara

Okay, I understand the reasoning behind not printing them all at once but,
hypothetically speaking, what does a person do if for some reason halfway
through the edition, say, 1 year down the road the plate is permanently
messed up?! What does a person do if the edition is set at a given number?

I have been keeping bad company recently with a Giclee printmaker
who has just had a very successful exhibition of his work. In a throw
away comment I mentioned my latest thoughts on an autographic edition
of prints i.e. declare an edition of say 50 and print them as and
when required to save time, money and space.
He went balmy and thought I should stick to last centuries agreed
terms of a formal edition.....cheeky blighter!
Was he right?

I think it is in the giclee printer's interest to claim that printing
everything in one sitting is the "right" way to do it because he can do so
at the flip of a switch. Ask him to pull 250 4-color wet-on-wet prints in
one sitting by hand and he may change his values.

The hanga manga is delightful, and I find the large Japanamation cartoon
eyes very amusing, even when I cannot read the script.